NOTES for Luk 7:1-10

For the elders of Israel who were well disposed toward the centurion, it was important to stress that he cared for the people. This Roman loved the people of Israel conquered by his state and had even built a synagogue; against the background of conquerors’ usual behavior, this could not fail to attract attention. But while the building of the synagogue was a sign of goodwill in the elders’ eyes, for the centurion it proved to be a stage in an inward spiritual search.

Did the centurion consider himself unworthy only because he knew the Jewish rules about impurity and respected local customs? What if he felt his own sinfulness, and his request that Jesus refrain from entering his house was akin to Peter’s plea that He depart from him, “a sinful man”? For some reason the second possibility seems more likely, especially since Jesus, addressing the people, notes that the centurion possesses a faith such as He had not found even in Israel.

The pagan, whose heart had been opened by the law he had only recently come to know, proved more ready to receive Jesus than many Jews who had known the law from childhood. But let us not use this as grounds for exalting ourselves above the Jews of that time. Today too we may encounter both new converts who are open to Christ and long-standing Christians who have grown accustomed to possessing spiritual treasures and therefore forget about them.

As in all the cases of resurrection and healing mentioned by the evangelists, here before us is the manifestation of the Kingdom that Jesus brought into the world. In this Kingdom there is no place for sickness or death, and everyone who comes into contact with it receives life and health in all their fullness, insofar as such fullness is accessible to him within the framework of humanity not yet transformed.

But the Kingdom is not simply some place or space, even one that is somehow specially arranged or organized. The Kingdom is first of all relationships binding people with Christ and with one another. One could even say that the Kingdom as a special kind of place or space is determined by these relationships and depends on them. Indeed, if we take, for example, the story of the healing of the centurion's servant, here there is not really any single continuous physical or mystical space: at the moment when the centurion's servant was healed, Jesus was quite far from him, and the servant himself very possibly may not even have known that his master was asking for his healing. But there is one spiritual space, and it is generated by the relationships of love and trust that bound the centurion both to his servant and to Jesus.

It is quite obvious that the centurion had an altogether special attitude toward his servant, who in the original is directly called a slave: such concern for a sick slave was plainly unusual for Romans, who were by no means inclined to sentimentality. Evidently this love forced him to turn to the Teacher, about whom all kinds of rumors circulated among the people, but about whom it was known for certain that He healed everyone ready to trust Him. And the centurion truly managed to trust Jesus in a way that, according to Jesus' own testimony, few had trusted Him even among the people of God, verse 9: he did not dare call the Teacher to his house, being completely certain that His desire alone would be enough for healing, verses 6-8.

The measure of trust and love proved so great that the Kingdom became a reality not only for the centurion himself, but also for his servant, who did not see Jesus at all and perhaps even knew nothing about Him. Thus relationships give birth to the Kingdom. And then it becomes clear why Jesus is ready to enter every house where He is awaited. For those who wait for Him and receive Him thereby increase the space of the Kingdom, themselves becoming part of it, and therefore its witnesses and servants. The same kind of witnesses and servants Jesus wants to see in each of us.

In Bishop Cassian's translation, the centurion's words sound like this: "for I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to one, 'go,' and he goes, and to another, 'come,' and he comes, and to this slave of mine, 'do this,' and he does it". In the Synodal translation, however: "For I too am a man under authority, but having soldiers under me, I say to one: go, and he goes; and to another: come, and he comes; and to my servant: do that, and he does it."

Let us note that in the two cases the pronoun "I" and the conjunction "also" appear in a different order. This difference is not accidental. Something led the authors of the Synodal translation to change the word order, even though it is exactly that way in the original and in all modern and old translations, making the phrase hard to pronounce and unnatural in Russian. It looks very much as if it came to mean "although I too am a man under authority, yet I have under my command..." And we need to understand what this "something" is, the thing Bishop Cassian removed, because it gives a great deal, as we see it, for understanding the text.

If the centurion says, "I also am a man under authority," then he means: I, like someone else. And who is this someone else? He is speaking with Jesus. All these words are addressed to Him... In essence, the centurion is saying this. There is authority over me, and I have subordinates; there is a certain three-level hierarchy of society in which he stands in the middle between the lower and higher levels. And he says to Jesus: just like You. That is, You too have Someone over You, to whom You are subject, just as I am subject to authority. And this Someone is, of course, God. He involuntarily transfers the three-level hierarchy to which he himself is accustomed onto the whole structure of the universe. And he places Jesus in the middle, as though He were a mediator between God and man.

For us this is entirely different. For Jesus is not a mediator, but God Himself. That is precisely why in the Synodal translation these two words were rearranged and this meaning was completely removed from the text. But if we turn to the corrected text...

Yet this must not frighten us in any way; there is nothing terrible here at all. On the contrary, this is not a reason for doubt but for wonder, wonder at our Lord, at His humility, ready to accept being seen merely as a mediator and declaring the centurion's faith better than the faith He had found in Israel. Let us note that only comparative descriptions are used here; the centurion's faith is by no means recognized as the ideal of faith for all times and peoples. But it was already a breakthrough, already a step, to see in Him God's envoy, a Man subject to God; that is already very, very much, and the Lord values this step so highly.

The Lord values every little step of ours in general. Even if we have taken a small step away from a very primitive faith toward understanding something a little more complex, the Lord already values it very, very much and is generous both with praise and with complete help. It seems to us that this text, as we read it in Bishop Cassian, is an amazing witness to the Lord's humility and His ineffable kindness.

We all believe that the Lord, who created this world, has complete power over nature. That is as easy to imagine as an officer commanding soldiers on a parade ground: at his command they all turn right, and at another they all turn left!

But do we believe that the Lord can heal a sick person before our eyes—just like that: He speaks, and the person recovers? “Well,” we might say, “in theory we believe that too...” Do we see the enormous difference between theoretical belief in God's omnipotence and faith in a miracle that directly concerns us? No such gap existed in the military mind of the Roman centurion: his faith was not theoretical but living—and a miracle occurred. Perhaps the Lord would not find such faith not only in Israel...

Today we return again to such a fundamental concept as faith. In the Bible this word most often means not simply trust in some information, but the ability at a critical moment to "take hold" of God, to lean on Him as on a firm pillar or rock.

Today's story about the Roman officer who asked Jesus to heal his servant, and whom Christ sets as an example for His disciples, illustrates this well. He is a military man, trained in army discipline, and he is absolutely certain that his order will be carried out, just as he himself is ready to carry out the order of his commander. In his relationship with God, such confidence rests not on discipline and military order, where a soldier is punished with death for disobedience, but on something no less strong: namely, on faith.

Strictly speaking, when Scripture speaks about faith, it is speaking about faith that is stronger even than death, so that the sick are healed and the dead are raised.

When the Lord tells us that it is useless to call upon Him without doing what He says, when He tells us that everyone is known by the fruit they bear, this reveals His utmost strictness. We are not accustomed to this. For us it is often most important that a person be good; as for the fact that he is unsuccessful and has accomplished nothing special, we are often quite ready to forgive that. Indeed, the opposite is more likely: if a person is not very kind, his real achievements even irritate us and seem somehow out of place. Yet we should accept such strictness from the Lord with joy, because it gives us confidence that if we follow these words, we are firm as rock and nothing can shake us.

But even this is not the main thing. The main thing lies in our love. Love is an astonishingly creative feeling. Recall being in love with another person. It seems that you could run around the whole world three times to find what your beloved needs. Our love for God should be just like that. We should burn with the desire to do everything for Him, to do everything as He wants and commands. If we have this feeling, akin to passionate love, and if we do not allow it to fade, we are like the person who built his house upon rock.

For an adequate understanding of the Savior's words, it is important to imagine how houses were built in Judea, and in all Palestine, in Gospel times. The soil in most of Palestine is rocky; the powerful foundations needed when building on clay or sandy soils are not necessary there. It was only necessary to clear away the upper alluvial layer (usually thin enough) in order to reach the stone. After that, the simplest strip foundation was laid, its basis being large corner stones (cornerstones). But removing the upper layer was absolutely necessary; otherwise, in winter, during the rainy season, when turbulent streams flow from the mountains down the slopes into the valleys, the house would almost certainly "float."

The Savior, as we can see, compares spiritual life with a house that makes sense to build only on rock, after first clearing it of everything that can get in the way of construction. Clearly, the image of a house built on rock was meant to remind the listeners that listening and hearing are not the same thing. The one who has heard will certainly move from words to action, applying what he has heard in practice. But, of course, there will also be those who, after listening to everything, will not want to change anything in their life.

And this is no surprise: in spiritual life the main role is played not by intellect and not by feeling, but by the will. It is precisely through acts of will that the spiritual "I" of a person, which constitutes the center of the human person, manifests itself. But often the person himself does not realize this, at least when it comes to practical life. And he lives without realizing either the true causes or the true significance of his decisions and actions.

Such unexamined spiritual life really resembles a house built on sand: the acts of will that determine a person's spiritual life remain for the most part unconsidered, and often entirely unnoticed, so that a person, in a spiritual sense (and sometimes not only in a spiritual sense), literally lives without knowing how.

Any thought that unexpectedly comes to mind and any feeling that seizes the heart can lead to decisions and actions completely unexpected even for the person himself, decisions and actions that he often can neither understand nor explain. And only full awareness of every choice made and every decision taken makes a person's spiritual life (as well as his life in general) inwardly whole and consistent. In that case every action of the person comes from the depth of his spiritual "I." And his spiritual life turns out to be founded not on the shifting sand of random thoughts and feelings, but on the rock of conscious choice.